UK-Developed 'DNA Spray' Marks Dutch Thieves With Trackable Water 191
eldavojohn writes "In Rotterdam, there's a new technology in place that dispenses a barely visible mist over those around it and alerts the police. The purpose? To tag robbers and link them back to the scene of the crime. From the article, 'The mist — visible only under ultraviolet light — carries DNA markers particular to the location, enabling the police to match the burglar with the place burgled. Now, a sign on the front door of the McDonald's prominently warns potential thieves of the spray's presence: "You Steal, You're Marked."' Developed in Britain, it's yet to nab a criminal but it will be interesting to see whether or not synthesized DNA will hold up as sufficient evidence in an actual court of law." So it's not just for copper thieves.
Re:Water? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously? I'm no scientist, but it seems like a good scrubbing and you'd make a clean getaway. Har har...
Good joke; but since you are no scientist, perhaps you wouldn't know that they even think about these trivial, blindingly obvious things and test for them.
Nope, mate, what you see here is a bloody clever thing, and not something you can easily find a way out of. DNA sequences can be purpose built nowadays, and soon it will be cheap enough for everybody to buy. The number of variations are practically unlimited, so you could more or less mark every brick in London with their own, individual marker, and you can't just wash it off and be sure not to carry it around with you; plus of course they don't put a big sticker on the outside of marked objects to warn you. If you want to avoid carrying this stuff around with you, you will have to put on a full environment suit, and since you never know where you can come across this stuff, you will have to do it every time you do something you don't want to be nicked for. The problem with environment suits is, they tend to stand out, of course.
Re:Water? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of everything. Because this is a fine mist that will stick to everything, even your hands, shoes, clothes, socks, the bag, the tools, the stolen property. So you'd need to do a job and then ditch everything you have in a forensically secure way. I've used a similar competing product called SmartWater.
The beauty of things like SmartWater is that its a suspension of fine molecules that can be *uniquely* identified to a particular user (i.e. you get a coded bottle with a unique number and a unique solution). The UV is just there to light up when people go through police stations but the chemical itself is, supposedly, uniquely identifiable.
Answering "How did you come to have UV marker solution on your clothes?" is easy. You were security marking your own equipment, you work with the stuff all the time, it must have been on something you picked up, maybe someone was playing a prank. Answering "How did you come to have a UV marker solution on the clothes you wore last night that is ONLY issued to Company X, when there was a burglary at Company X last night, when you claim to have been at home and never near Company X?" is a bit more tricky, especially if it's a fine mist that soaks into anything and everything it touches.
I've used the SmartWater stuff, which is very similar to this, and it's a wonderful deterrent. They claim to have a 100% conviction rate when property / people are found by police with SmartWater on them and given that they are often used in bank security vans, that's quite impressive. I don't know if that was true, or still is, but it's plausible. Basically if the police find the tiniest forensic trace of that stuff on property / people they question, they can take a sample, send it to the company, who will tell them who bought that EXACT pot of tracer ink. I also know from experience that a 50ml pot of SmartWater is enough to chemically mark every PC or electrical item in a school several times a year and last several years.
This stuff isn't just a UV-tracer. It puts you, forensically, at the exact scene of a particular crime. And given that I know of no lawsuits with any of these stuff being in question, they must have a pretty cast-iron chemical description that can satisfy a court of law or, at least, people who are caught with it on their clothes that it wouldn't be worth challenging.
It's also very good for equipment recovery. It basically guarantees identificiation / return of stolen property if it comes into police hands. Before, even if your stuff was security marked, it wasn't guaranteed that you would get it back (the first thing is that people try to file off the security marks - I've had police tell me of cases where they had to return goods with obviously filed-off security marks because they couldn't prove it WASN'T the suspected thieves and couldn't trace the actual owner), but with SmartWater once it's in police possession even the smallest tiny speck of SmartWater (which can be deployed even on hard-to-cleanse areas like across the PCB's of (unpowered) motherboards) or similar will link it to it's owner.
So it's even better? (Score:3, Interesting)
So it's even better?
Just as I was reading that story, I was thinking, "WTF, why McDonald?" I mean in retail the majority of thefts are by employees, not some guy charging in to snatch a plastic cup and run.
So now you just need to figure how to trip the spray on some lone guy who came for a burger at 2 AM, pocket a thousand and claim he robbed you. Or you can get even more creative if the miracle bottle that the PHB marks everything with is easily accessible by just, say, opening his desk drawer.
Thanks to idiot juries who, thanks to what now is called the "CSI effect" will blindly convict if there's some high-tech shit they don't understand as evidence -- and just as sadly occasionally won't convict even with six witnesses if you don't also some techno-magic involved to finger the culprit -- you're almost guaranteed to have the scheme work unless you overdo it and become the store that's robbed at 2AM every night.
Re:Water? (Score:3, Interesting)
It does. To an extent. Not enough though.
The PCR techniques used to amplify it for detection purposes are so sensitive that enough remains can be picked up by crimelab.
The only way to reliably "clean" clothing that has come into contact with this is to dip it in DNAases (enzymes that specifically hydrolise DNA). These are actually quite easy to come by in Holland. Holland is one of the world capitals of developing "pumped up" chicken meat. That used to be "pumped up" with crude pork and beef proteins extracts, however labs started picking up pork or beef based on DNA (very similar to this detection method). So now the extracts are treated with DNAase so that the tests do not work. As a result DNAase is actually not that difficult to come by. Just talk to your "halal" (quotes intended as it is stuffed with pork to the hilt) cheap chicken supplier.
Not that it would matter anyway as this is mostly against petty criminals.
Criminals Exchange DNA as well as goods (Score:1, Interesting)
Nearly every dollar bill contains traces of cocaine. You have them in your wallet. Does that make you both a dealer and a criminal and associating with criminals?
Criminal 'does' a bank. Criminal is nabbed, but claims because he works or spends way too much time at Mc D's, or the local gym, community basketball court - and some must have rubbed off, or off a local hooker, where the real criminal may have passed on something, plus some dna marker.
All it proves is a circumstantial contact - bring in a few local bank tellers or McD workers - and they will have the same tagging.
Some criminals wear hoodies. Same crim runs out and gets away (rare) then rubs hoods with mates at local skateboard park. Who did it?
I think this proves keeping CCV cameras well maintained and working - is cheaper and better
Re:Water? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Water? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you sure it was only issued to company X? Show my evidence that no other bottle could possibly contain the same solution. See, with humans this process occurs naturally, everyone has different DNA (with extremely high probability) because of how biology works. Once you start making your own, you've shown that it's possible to duplicate DNA, thus the solution is NOT necessarily unique.
"I also know from experience that a 50ml pot of SmartWater is enough to chemically mark every PC or electrical item in a school several times a year and last several years."
So, you have now just told us that you have the ability to put the SAME SOLUTION on multiple DIFFERENT ENTITIES MULTIPLE TIMES PER YER for years on end. Thus, anyone could, with only a tiny amount of this stuff, frame any number of different people with extreme ease.
"but with SmartWater once it's in police possession even the smallest tiny speck of SmartWater (which can be deployed even on hard-to-cleanse areas like across the PCB's of (unpowered) motherboards) or similar will link it to it's owner."
No, it will link it to whoever managed to get their hands on one of these bottles and spray it on whatever the fuck they felt like. I could go mark every computer at my local university with this stuff and then claim that the entire computer lab belonged to me because only I have this bottle of magic property-identifying liquid.
Re:Water? (Score:1, Interesting)
Just curious: did he try going to one of those spas where they completely cover you in exfoliating mud and then take it off? Someone should. You get to prove one or the other ineffective...